Short & Sweet | ✓

Bus

You know when it's raining, and the droplets are running down a window, and a sad song comes on in your earphones, and you sort of look outside and pretend you're in a music video? Well the late night bus on a cold Autumn evening happens to be the perfect setting for that kind of scenario.

The light from the lampposts are blurred behind the mixture of water and fog on the window, and the cold air of the bus bites into my exposed cheeks.

The bus stops and more people pile on, filling empty seats until only the one next to me remains.

"Can I sit here?"

I look up at the boy, looking very cold in his thin jacket. "Yeah, of course." I reply, moving my bag and shuffling closer to the window.

"Cheers."

We sit in the awkward silence that all strangers do, avoiding any contact at all costs. He rubs his hands together, blowing into them, and I debate giving him my flask of hot chocolate to hold for a bit. But that would be weird.

So we sit there, earphones in, him cold and me cosy. Two parallels in adjacent seats. The bus turns a sharp corner, and the boy, taken off guard, does the unthinkable. His whole body leans against the turn of the bus, his side coming into full contact with mine, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh. I tense, the cold of his jeans seeping straight through my warm tights. Oh God, we've touched, this isn't supposed to happen, it's against the rules.

"Sorry." He mumbles with a tight smile, readjusting back to his position of non contact. I breathe a sigh of relief and return the smile meekly.

I hate buses. There's always someone who smells of stale sweat, and another who has a cold, coughing and sneezing, contaminating everything with their careless actions. It's a toxic wasteland, who knows who's on this bus. The local crackhead, maybe a murderer on the run, a pickpocket looking for their next victim. It makes me feel sick thinking about it.

The boy say next to me could be any of them. Hell, he could be all three and I'd have no idea. He looks nice enough. Glasses, messy hair, underdressed for the weather but still presentable, on his feet a pair of battered converse similar to my own.

Strange how paths cross. If one of us had done anything a minute later than we did, we wouldn't be sat next to each other right now. We might've missed the bus, or sat somewhere else, an endless amount of possibilities yet we landed with this one.

I could've been sat next to an old lady, a middle aged man, but no. A boy my age with a vans rucksack and striped socks.

When the bus turns another corner, I lean, ever so slightly. A quick brush of our coats is all. The brief contact over almost as soon as it began.

Everything feels more special at night. Less coincidental and more like fate. Maybe him sitting next to me was completely by chance.

Or maybe it wasn't.